DozyWannabe
I deliberately picked an example of a car which is available to purchase today rather than a self driving car, which I agree would have been a more accurate comparison.
The point being that automation covers many deficiencies in technique to the point where a less experienced pilot can be unaware of, or forgets to check trim settings and fails to use secondary instruments to infer missing information when the primary systems fail.
In the interests of fuel economy and cost saving, aircraft are being flown automatically at and beyond the ability of the best human pilots. When that automation fails, seeking to maintain extreme altitude for a given aircraft weight is not a wise course of action. It is however contrary to a pilot's instincts to deliberately fly to a lower altitude at night, in bad weather, over the middle of an ocean.
Machinbird
I suspect that pulsing, twitching the controls, or mayonnaise stirring is symptomatic of the PlayStation generation of pilots. It certainly is a popular technique among computer games players to speed up reaction times and maintain finer control. The technique works well so long as you have a computer to interpret and modify the inputs, less so when everything is hooked up directly to the controls.